Oh look, books!

I have written three (all on coaching; don’t know much about anything else) and read hundreds more (not all on coaching, but a lot were!)

The tale of my getting published the first time is an interesting example of ignorance is bliss. Many consultants I speak to are keen to get a book published and regularly ask me which literary agent I used or which service I used to distribute my manuscript.

The truth is I didn’t. I had several titles on my own bookshelf from Hodder & Stoughton’s ‘In a Week’ series. I think I had ‘Time Management in a Week’ and ‘Project Management in a Week’. Noticing that they didn’t have a title on coaching I decided to see if they’d like one.

Not knowing who to talk to I phoned main reception and said “I’m Matt Somers and I’d like to write a book on coaching for the in a week’ series. They must be trained to look kindly on happy amateurs because I was put through to the series editor who patiently explained that I needed to write a synopsis and a sample chapter.

This I did and they must have liked it because I was duly contracted to write the full title. I followed this with a fuller treatment of coaching for John Wiley & Son in Coaching at Work (2006) and have again written for Hodder with Instant Manager: Coaching (2008) which replaced Coaching in a Week when the series was revised.